But with the Xaela, it's a little more complicated. How exactly would a Xaela from a landlocked tribe (like, say, the Mierqid, who dwell in the desert) have been able to make the same trek?

FFXIV A Realm Reborn:How did the Xaela get to Eorzea?

So here's a question to which I've been combing my brain for an answer. There's no justification for it in-game, so how did the Xaela get to Eorzea?

With the Raen, it's a fairly straightforward affair of having arrived with the Domans, or having arrived in Eorzea before the razing of Doma.

But with the Xaela, it's a little more complicated. How exactly would a Xaela from a landlocked tribe (like, say, the Mierqid, who dwell in the desert) have been able to make the same trek? Othard is ostensibly conquered by the Garleans which gives many Xaela cause to seek refuge, but a tribe that's lived its entire life inland would have no reason to know how to sail. In addition, many Xaela tribes are competitive with one another, sometimes violently so. Meanwhile, there's no real concrete evidence besides perhaps the description of the Malaguld tribe--Xaela tribes accepting Raen is apparently considered quite an uncommon occurrence--but it seems that the Xaela and the Raen don't particularly get along and therefore it seems a tad bit unlikely that a Xaela would be allowed to tag along with one of the Doman's ships. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Of course, the coastal tribes would have knowledge of seafaring. Whether or not they'd know how to construct and crew ships capable of crossing oceans is a question that's up in the air, but let's assume that they do.

I mean, it's not as if that aforementioned Mierqid Xaela could just go up to the Haragin and barter their way for passage, right? Or could they? Would the Haragin even do that? That option doesn't seem too terribly plausible to me either, not unless the Haragin are opening a ferry service. The only other tribes that are mentioned to reside along the eastern coast are the Jhungid and the Kharlu who are in a state of constant war, and ownership of those coastal lands are in flux so they don't exactly seem inclined to provide ferry services either.

This is a weird sort of hole that's in the Au Ra lore that's been bugging me since the Xaela were announced. It's like the writers of Square Enix wrote themselves into a corner in this regard and just hand waved it away. "Uh, they just did! It just kind of happened." Or the Xaela just jump off of Othard and land in Eorzea, I guess.

So, Xaela roleplayers, what'd your Xaela do to get here?

i underestimating how refugee populations move. They move hard, fast, and by any route available, often even if it's expensive, dangerous, and impractical.

Why?

Because the current options are worse, and the potential payoff, either in basic safety quality of life, is so exponentially better in theory that it's worth it.

You can look to a lot of RL examples of how refugee populations move, both across the sea and across deserts and hazardous war-torn areas, in RL right now in the news. There's plenty of examples of people from desert areas and no ties to the sea jumping literally onto a ship to get the hell out of dodge right now in Europe/african relations (A lot of it is also laced with racist drivel, but that's another story).

It happens. It happens A LOT, in RL and IG. Refugee migration and influx is a thematic in FFXIV. Domans, Al Migans. There's so MANY people displaced by war, disaster, and suffering, that the Xaela are just another population who've been bent over a barrel by terrible circumstance and politics and maybe even other factors.

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